The world was a wet, full-throated, howl.  The hermit was at prayer in a stacked stone oratory that did well to stand against nature’s onslaught.  The hermit failed utterly to maintain his concentration on the offices.  Not that he could have heard his own voice above the wind and the rain, but his mind was roiling with more existential concerns than even mere existence.

Gospels was doubting himself.  Self examination is the stock and trade of a hermit, but he had felt the anchorite call so sure and strong only to be cast up not just once, but innumerable times on the same rock, this rock. Far be it from him to question his Lord, but on a clear day his new anchor-hold was within site of his old abbey.  Worse yet, in a few weeks, his brothers from that very abbey would come for spiritual retreat to this place and he would have to explain his presence.

Surely this was a lesson in pride, its dangers, its pitfalls, and its inevitable destination, shame.  Though he should be in prayer.  Though his duty was to praise the creator.  Though his life had been rigidly laid out ever since he joined the brethren, tonight he could not give himself to ritual.  He felt compelled, as he had felt compelled to enter the coracle, to leave his shelter and go down to the sea.

But heeding that call had cast him here. How could he trust it?  The doubt was strong, but the compulsion was stronger.  Gospels rose from his knees and walked into the storm.  The ferocious blast caught at his clothes, ripping the hood from his head, it lifted him completely from the ground, and then smashing him down hard with his head and shoulders up against the stacked stone of a beehive cell. 

In moments he was drenched.  The howling wind made a chorus of shrieking across the uneven stacked stone buildings around him.  The hard rain was in his eyes, but worst of all, with the wind so strong, he could barely draw breath in it.

He was no stranger to discomfort, but the storm seemed capable of drowning him where he lay.  He struggled to gather himself using the support of the wall behind him and managed to get feet below and head toward the gale.  He balanced with his body against the wall and with both hands pulled his hood back over his head.

Gospels moved carefully along the rounded beehive cell into the lee of the oratory then crawled to the shelter of that downwind cover.  Panting, he paused only a moment, then clinging to the ground and the stacked stone of its wall he made his way around and back into the full force of the wind and rain. “Lord God preserve. . .”

The hermit, bit by tortuous bit, worked his way through a cut and onto the windward face of his stone island seeking the small leather covered boat that had carried him to his solitude.  The ocean waves were enormous, they battered the island with concussion that Gospels felt through his whole body as he lay buffeted by the wind.  The heaving swells looked tall enough to top the whole island and then they were dashed to foam upon the rock.

“Lord!” cried the monk, “I can’t find it!” He scanned where he thought the little boat should be, but there was nothing familiar there.  The wind continued to roar, mixed with that of the sea, but the rain subsided.  There was wreckage in the waves, but not the ash frame and hide of his coracle. 

“Oh God no,” Gospels saw among the tangled remains of a larger craft than his, a body.  The huge wave lifted and lifted, he saw that it was a man, and then the wave struck the island with a boom, sending spray up and obscuring all else.

The sea water cascaded off the island leaving  bits of what may have been a boat and there also feebly clutching the rocks, trying to hold to them, was a man.  Gospels scrambled down the wet rocks toward the struggling figure only to watch in horror as the sea tore him from the rocks and swallowed him again. 

Again the sea rose in a wall and there among the foam was a terrified face for a moment and then all was white. Gospels cried, “Lord Jesus save him. I can not!”

The rushing water receded leaving the man, caught between two rocks by his foot wedged there.  Gospels moved closer, but was nearly pulled off the rocks when the next wave turned everything to foam and the wave sucked hungrily at him as it returned.  “Jesus, save us!” Gospels took hold of the man’s leg, but couldn’t imagine what he could do to lift him free.

The wave broke over him, lifting him, The only thing that wasn’t water was the man’s leg and he clung to it like it was life, like it was salvation.  He was slammed against hardness.  Sickeningly he felt the strong pull of the sea dragging him across the roughness of the stone. He spread himself, desperately, seeking some purchase and found here a hand hold and there his foot caught and held, the dead weight of the man struck him but he was not dislodged, with his other hand he clutched at the body.

The Abbott and the Djinn chp 1.2 available HERE

“I am sick, old, and tired,” said Anuniaq, “honor me now by putting me on a great ice mountain and letting me go to sea. I would see the ocean again before I die.”

“Oh NO! honored one!” cried the Others, “Do not say such things.  We never tire of your wisdom.  Do not deprive your family of your knowledge.”

“Phah,” said Anuniaq, disgusted, “I have told those stories so many times that I have forgotten to believe them myself.  Your young poets correct me when I exaggerate and remind me when I forget.  Let me walk the white road as my fathers did before me.”

“Father Anuniaq, may it never be,” said the Others, “From you we learned to sail, we learned the ways of the sea and the waters great and small.  We would not know how to make the simplest coracle but for your teaching.  Do not leave us without your knowledge.”

Anuniaq replied, “If that were so, perhaps I would have to suffer on, but it is not!  Why the youngest among you can make for themselves any number of craft better than anything I could ever make.  Would you have me suffer for no reason?  Let me at least be a man on the last day of my life.”

The argument went on and on, but though the Others had surpassed Anuniaq in wisdom and knowledge and craft and hunting and wind knowing and wave reading none could surpass him in stubbornness.  So it was that Anuniaq sat upon the great back of a sea going ice mountain.

For days they had given him gifts which lay piled around him and they kept bothering him, pestering him with questions they knew the answers to and begging him to stay with them.  His guts hurt more now then ever they had before and he guessed his time was short.

“It is well,” thought Anuniaq, “I have lived a good life, At last I can die in peace as my ancestors did.”  He sat and watched the clouds slide by overhead, but this was fairly boring, he had to admit it.  He imagined that there aught to me something more to this going to sea for the last time.

“Phah!” he said to the world in general, “They spoiled it with all their gift giving, and “oh don’t go Grandfathering”, and their goings on have made a mess of what should have been a meaningful and dignified end.

Instead of dead he was just cold.  They had made him an ice seat so he wouldn’t have to lie down where he couldn’t see the world go by.  But just like them, all it was giving him was a cold pain in the ass.  Pretty soon Anuniaq was shivering.

He sighed heavily. “There must be a cancer in my gut, the way it twisted at me, Oh, to be done with that pain.” Anuniaq thought, “Indeed, why would you torment an old man with feasting who’s guts were ruined with cancer? Oh they didn’t care about him, just the idea of him.”

“It wasn’t their fault really. He had enjoyed the feasting and a bit too much to tell the truth. It was just that this dying thing would be a lot more dignified if he didn’t have to get up and go purge his canker riddled bowels again.” He staggered to his feet, not just cold, but he was wet now. “Would the humiliation ever end?” He tottered off to find a new place to empty himself.

On his way back he dug through the gifts and found a fine seal skin to wrap around himself while his breeches dried. In his explorations he also found more of the wonderful stuffed leaves boiled in sauce and so full of wonderful goodness he could not resist eating them until they were gone. They were his favorite, even cold. Well fed he returned to his ice throne.

He could see now where the wetness had come from. His body, sitting as it had for so long and on such a remarkably warm day, had melted the seat of his throne. Well, there were wraps and gifts of embroidery and this and that enough so that he piled up a fine lot of them and had many more to cover himself while he watched the sun descend into the sea.

“Perhaps this moment is much more the sort of thing one ought to see before he goes.”  Thought Anuniaq.  He watched the sun die in fire, setting the whole of the sky alight with red and gold.  He was well pleased to see the stars come out after that and He watched the moons rise as well before nodding off to sleep.

He awoke in sweat and agony.  “Oh mercy, why could he not have died with that marvelous sunset.” He ran off a ways and spilled his bowels, glad that he wore a skin around his waist and not his breeches. After that he felt a bit better.

*  *  *

“Surely he was cursed.  He had been stranded on the damn ice-flow for a week now.  The blue skies and fluffy clouds had been boring that first whole day alone, but that was as nothing to day after day of nothing but sun and his chair.  Worse, now, he had eaten anything even remotely edible among his gifts days ago.  He was going to die and there was nothing he could do about it,” Anuniaq thought.

Anuniaq pondered, “Would it be better to starve or freeze?” For the hundredth time he rummaged through the things strewn around his ice chair, though there were hides aplenty there was not enough other material to form a frame. Even if there was he had nothing to grease the joinings. “And nothing, nothing, nothing to eat,” fussed Anuniaq.

 Defeated, Anuniaq slumped in his skin covered ice throne.  He gazed out over the sea, quiet and boring really, it was nearly still from his ice flow to the horizon beneath the clear blue of the sky. “There were very slight whispy clouds far off, perhaps some interesting weather would come his way.  Likely rain to add misery to his bordum.  There was also something else at the very horizon. 

“That’s a sail!” shouted Annuniaq, leaping to his feet on his ice throne.  And surely as he could feel a slight breeze pressing against his face, low on the horizon rose a boat, sails full of that whisper of a breeze. 

It’s approach seemed interminable, but at last a very fine sloop rigged wooden boat drew up and hailed him.  When Annuniaq shouted who he was there was a great furor aboard, a row boat was put out, and rowed to get him.

“What are you doing out on the ice Grandfather?” asked the Others. Annuniaq noticed that this group of his “children” avoided calling him “wise one”

 ”Oh, my people often do this,” lied Annuniaq. ”Haven’t I told you tales of great wandering by my folk on these mountains of ice?”

They all shook their heads, honest to a fault, “No. Never.”

“Ah, well you must have missed that night’s storytelling, because it is a good way to think and so common among my old people, the Ice-folk. Haven’t you wondered why we are called that? Surely you don’t think we are made of frozen water.” Annuniaq commented reproachfully. Slightly disturbed murmerings followed, drowned out by a loud rumbling from the region of Annuniaq’s empty stomach.

“Well none of that matters now,” said Annuniaq as he was hauled aboard the sloop. ”Do you have anything to eat?”

“Oh yes grandfather! We will bring you refreshment,” said the Others.

“That is well, then I can relate to you my thinkings and the way of my people, the Ice-folk… ” And so it was that a new tradition of the ice-folk was created that none of them, save Anuniaq, was aware, “  …say would you have some of those leaves stuffed with…”

“Humble apologies Grandfather”  

“ No? Well that’s probably for the best, come to think on it.”

This is not the first tale about Annuniaq (formerly Mamute) that could be told.  I will see if I can find some of what is already imagined to add to what is known about this character who figures into the westward expansion of the UiUilsen and their transformation into the folk called Wanderers whether they were found on the waters or on land as in the story of “The Man Who Forgot Himself.”

 In the story I will need a few Inuit names: The hero of the story (formerly Mamute) / Amak – tag (play), Annakpok – free (not caught), Anuniaq – one who hunts for food or knowledge, Illiivat — a person young or old who is learning something, Ipiktok – keen, sharp, Pakak — one that gets into everything,

Father’s Friend / Ataninnuaq– one who counsels/one who has lived and knows things, Illiivat – a person young or old who is learning something, Itigiaq — weasel, Nagojut — friendly, Oogrooq – bearded Seal, one who has a long life,

Hero’s remembered first love / Anana – beautiful, Iyaroak – apple of the eye, Buniq – sweet daughter, Nigaq – rainbow, Yuralria– dancing one